Challenges of Hospitality and Tourism Industry

Running head: CHALLENGES OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM INDUSTRY
Challenges of Hospitality and Tourism Industry
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1CHALLENGES OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM INDUSTRY
Hospitality and tourism business is a blooming industry that requires a huge number of
workforces. In order to maintain long-term sustenance and growth, these organizations need a
huge and efficient supply of workforce. However, in hospitality and tourism industry is facing
serious problems while retaining the workforce. According to researches, the number of annual
turnover in the hospitality industry is at an alarming rate. In this regard, it can be said that
employee retention is a critical problem for the leaders of the hospitality industry. Compared to
the other industries, the tourism and hospitality industries are witnessing the lowest rates of
employee retention. In this regard, the primary issues faced by the hospitality and tourism
industries are to be analyzed. The major challenges and the possible strategies to overcome these
problems are also to be analyzed. Moreover, it can be noticed that the organizations operating in
the hospitality and tourism industry are often involved in high competition regarding acquiring
efficient workforces and retaining them. Hence, the strategies of employing efficient employees
and their retention is also to be analyzed.
As pointed out by Blomme, Van Rheede & Tromp, (2009), the primary challenges faced
by the human resource management of this industry include high turnover of employees, low
wage issues, recruitment of unskilled labor and workforce issues. The hospitality and tourism
industry is considered as one of the most stressful one. The longer working hours and work
pressure are the prominent reasons behind the high turnover of the employees. The long working
hours and work pressure is affecting the social life of the employees. As the hospitality and
tourism industry demands for work related pressure it is noticed that the employees are prone to
burn outs and stress. According to Hughes & Rog, (2008), job elated stress and longer working
hours are also the reasons behind the volatile nature amongst the employees of this sector. It has
been noticed that a significant number of employees are working in the hospitality sectors are

2CHALLENGES OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM INDUSTRY
unskilled labors and are working in order to gather experiences. This has emerged as one of the
major issues regarding the low employee loyalty.
According to Eisenberger et al., (2002), several wage theft issues are also affecting the
hospitality industry to a great extent. As a result of the high demand of workforce, employers in
this sector often chose to employ high number of unskilled and inexperienced labors. As a result
of this, the organizations also tend to pay meager compensation to the employees. This meager
compensation clubbed with the longer and stressful working hours are playing influential role in
employee turnover. As opined by Rehman & Mubashar, (2017), the tourism and hospitality
industry has a very low and unstructured award system. It has been monitored that these
employees often need to work under immense stress and that too for a long span, hence; they are
losing their morale to work efficiently. The lack of awarding system in this industry is
aggravating the matter greatly. As opined by Prathiba (2016), the wage structure in the
hospitality and the tourism industry is significantly low. This is affecting the efficiency and
willingness of the employees to perform. In addition to this, these organizations operating in the
hospitality and tourism industry have no proper rules and regulations regarding extra working
hours. It has been noticed that the organizations operating in the hospitality industry do not pay
extra compensation for the extra working hours. In addition to this, Barron (2008), has pointed
out that the hospitality industry primarily deals in customer satisfaction. Hence, the organizations
have come up with huge penalty for the poor performance of the employees. This is aggravating
the matter largely.
Dermody, Young & Taylor (2004), have also pointed out that tourism as well as the
hospitality industry is primarily dependent on the unskilled labor. This is raising significant
issues regarding the performance of the employees and customer satisfaction. In addition to this,